


The Province of the Brave

by Mosca



Series: Five Worlds Without Shrimp [3]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several versions of Gunn survive the last battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Province of the Brave

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to my Livejournal in August 2006.
> 
> k and SA beta read this. I wrote it for the Gunnficathon fic exchange and as a birthday gift for Mimesere. The title is from a TV on the Radio song.
> 
> The stories in "Five Worlds Without Shrimp" are all set in different universes, and each one stands alone. Each imagines a world in which the events of AtS are all about the journey of a secondary character.

Gunn is in an alley, bleeding to death. He leans against a dumpster to catch what's left of his breath. The red handprint on the green metal terrifies him. No, what terrifies him is that the handprint is a streak, moving downward. The fear makes him sleepy, and he thinks, he can close his eyes for a minute, the ground is hard but he's too tired to fight. He'll just close his eyes for a minute, and then he'll wake up for round two. 

Gunn is in a hospital with a tube down his throat, and a machine is breathing for him. His eyelids are made of concrete. He has a song stuck in his head:
    
    
    	They are men of might, ha! ha!
    	Fighting is their trade.
    	Order comes to fight, ha! ha!
    	Order is obeyed!

He misses the days when he used to get Jurassic 5 songs in his head, hum "Quality Control" while he Soft-Scrubbed blood off poleaxes. Now, it's all light opera. Sometimes he likes that, but sometimes it's just in his head.

He gets his eyes to open. It's hard work, but he's stronger than his own eyelids if he's anything. He was in an alley, bleeding to death. He is in a hospital bed, and a machine is breathing for him. In his memory, there's nothing in between, not even a movie fade, not even a prophetic dream. The pain is in all the same places. The song in his head is the same. The fight to open his eyes has made him sleepy, and he thinks, he's already in bed; it won't hurt to go back to sleep for just a few minutes.

The next time he wakes up, his eyelids are lighter, and there's a nurse there to notice. After that, the memories move in fits and starts. They take the tubes out one by one, out of his throat and out of his arms. He gets to eat ice chips, then clear liquids, then hospital food that makes him miss the ice chips. He can stay awake long enough to watch daytime television, to bribe an orderly to buy him some comic books from the gift shop, to recite entire operettas in his head. He gets a wheelchair, a walker, a few tentative unassisted steps towards the bathroom. His only visitor is a old lady named Lucretia, the kind of woman who's Aunt Luce to every kid for five blocks. She's a volunteer from a church group, and she's taken a shine to Gunn. They play crazy eights, and she talks about all the awful things she's read in the Times and the Weekly World News. "Gotta know what's going on in the world," she says. "Gotta know even if it makes you cry." When he's well enough to eat solid food, she brings him ice-cold slices of homemade sweet potato pie, which he devours after she leaves, and a Bible, which he can't bring himself to touch.

He's absorbed in the latest installment of Starting Over when the nurse tells him he's got company. He assumes it's Aunt Luce, with her deck of cards and her newspaper clippings, but it's a man in an expensive dark suit. He has a mild, creased face that exudes evil; Gunn recognizes him vaguely. "I was so pleased to hear of your recovery, Charles," the man says, placing a small but overly elegant vase of yellow roses on Gunn's windowsill. "My sources say you'll be discharged within a few days," he adds with a wink.

"Good to hear," Gunn says.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you don't remember me, do you?" the man says. "I'd been told there'd been some restructuring up there." He taps his head, then extends his hand. "Holland Manners. Wolfram and Hart Special Services."

Gunn wants to tell him that it's not the result of any brain augmentation, just the fact that old white guys tend to look the same after a while. He masks his scowl with a professional furrow of the brow and shakes Manners's hand. It's ice cold. Dead man cold. The way sweet potato pie never is. "Is this the Senior Partners' way of telling me my job is waiting for me if I want it?"

"Oh, Charles, you and I both know there's no 'wanting' involved," Manners says. "Or are you going to tell me you haven't read over your contract a hundred times and rued the fact that you signed it _before_ they filled your head with all that legal mumbo jumbo?"

He didn't need to read over his contract; he has it memorized. They made sure of that. "So that's it? Soon as I'm out of here, I'm back to defending the demon community from the long arm of temporal law?"

"Goodness, no," Manners says. "You're on indefinite paid leave until you've recovered sufficiently. The firm's insurance plan is _very_ generous about injuries sustained in battle with supernatural forces. As I'm sure you're aware."

"So by 'indefinite leave,' you mean --"

"Sometimes recovery from these kinds of injuries can be _awfully_ slow," Manners says. "Years, in some cases. Some people _never recover_."

"So in the meantime, if I were to --"

"Whatever you want," Manners says, his face broadening into another reptilian smile. "Of course, there is one thing. Old business, so there's no rush."

"Of _course_ ," Gunn says.

"You see, the real reason the Senior Partners pulled me out of mothballs was to deliver you this." Manners hands Gunn an envelope. "For your eyes only."
    
    
    	Gunn,
    
    	If you're reading this, I'm dead and you're not. I'm glad you survived -- of all of
     	us, you're the one who has the most living left to do. All of our affairs should be
     	in order -- W&H is good about that. There's just one thing I need you to do, and
     	it's a phone call. He needs to know I'm dead, and he won't find out any other way.
     	His name is Connor. Tell him it has to do with his real dad. He'll know what that
     	means. 

The letter lists three phone numbers, identified as "dorm room," "cell phone," and "home." There's nothing else except Angel's signature. Gunn tries to ask Manners if anyone else has survived, if there's anything else he needs to know, if there's anything else he _can_ know. But by the time he looks up from the letter, Manners is gone. Gunn rereads the letter to see if there's some kind of subtext, a hidden clue. Angel isn't (wasn't) normally the type to do that, but Gunn's learned to read between the lines of anything cryptic. The only thing he catches on the second reading is that the area code and first three digits of the "dorm room" number mean that this Connor person is a student at Stanford. And how does Gunn know that? Because on paper, in theory, in some alternate universe where he has earned everything he now owns, Gunn holds a BA in Political Science from Stanford University, magna cum laude. He remembers his four years of imaginary college as if he's watched them on TV: everything from the dining hall food to the papers he wrote to the benders and hookups and random self-endangerment that constitute the American college experience. This kid is living for real the life that Gunn pretends to have lived.

Gunn puts down the letter, and it hits him. He's the only one left. If there were anybody else still alive, they would have found him by now. He bows his head and weeps until he's exhausted the thin box of hospital Kleenex on the bedside table. He cries until he falls asleep, and he dreams of dragons until he wakes up.

As Manners predicted, Gunn gets discharged from the hospital the next day. Aunt Luce is there to drive him home, and when they get to his place, she presents him with a huge foil pan of chicken, a whole sweet potato pie, and five Tupperware dishes full of vegetables: greens, string beans, mashed potatoes, baked beans with big floating chunks of pork, macaroni and cheese. "Something to get you started 'til you're on your feet again," she says. He's well enough to order takeout, but he accepts the food. There was a lady like Aunt Luce in his neighborhood, but once he hit puberty, he took to blowing her off. This is another of his many revisionist histories, and it's one he's going to take advantage of. He's going to pretend that he's known this lady since he was a kid. Maybe, with all the changes the firm made to the world on his behalf, he actually has. He puts the food down on the kitchen counter, and on top of the pile, she places a calling card for her church group. "Now, don't be too proud to call if you need anything," she says. "I'll be by with a few of the other ladies to check in on you in a few days' time." She gives him a gentle, pillowy hug, aware of his still-delicate condition, and she helps him put the food in the fridge. When she's gone, he thinks, it won't hurt to sleep, just for a while.

He's better and better, but he wears out fast. A meal and a shower are enough to sap all the energy out of him. When he's tired of chicken, he orders Chinese, dozes off waiting for it, and fights a searing pain through his side to get to the door to pay for it. But it's a little easier every day. On his fifth day home, he remembers that he hasn't quite lost everyone, and he calls Anne. When she hears who it is, she thinks he's a ghost, a vampire, a hallucination. But she's happy and relieved when she gets over the shock, and she comes right over with a pizza and kung fu movies. All the people he has left in the world are so much better than he is.

On the sixth day, his condo is full of church ladies, every one of whom has a great-niece he ought to meet. On the seventh, he calls Connor. The kid picks up on the fourth ring. He sounds dazed. Gunn says, "If I tell you it's about your real dad, will you understand what that means?" 

"Shit," the kid says. "He's dead, right?"

Gunn wants to find some way to spin it more positively, but the kid seems so Zen about it. He just says, "Yeah. Yeah, he's dead."

"I thought he would be," Connor says. "He made a really big deal out of spending the day with me, and I figured -- I figured it was going to end up being the last time I saw him. Like, sometimes you just know, right?"

"Right," Gunn lies. He's never just known, not once out of all the people he's lost. His mom, Alonna, Cordy, Fred, Wes, Angel: every one a surprise. He can't remember his last words to most of them, because the moments were mundane, forgettable. The people he loves are there and then gone, and there's nothing to signal their passing.

There's silence on the other end of the line for a while, and then, softly, "You don't know who I am, do you?"

"Am I supposed to?" Gunn says. He's starting to feel weak again: his toes are falling asleep, and there's a dull pain spreading up his side. 

"You used to," Connor says. "And now you're the only one who -- You are, aren't you? The rest of them are all gone, aren't they? Fred and Wesley and -- and the green guy."

"Fred, definitely," Gunn says. He sees her in his mind and has to clear his throat to keep from getting choked up. "Wes and Lorne, I -- I assume. You -- you knew them?"

"I knew all of you," Connor says. "I probably knew you the best, actually. Except for Cordelia."

"But I don't know _you_ ," Gunn says. 

"You used to," Connor says.

"Then why don't I now?" There were all kinds of limitations and obligations built into his upgrade, but everyone had been very clear on one point: a lot would be added, but nothing would be taken away. He scans his photographic memory, and there's no clause in his contact about removing entire college students. 

"Angel," Connor says. "He wanted to protect me. He -- It might have been overkill."

"You think?"

"He meant well," Connor says.

"He always does," Gunn says. He corrects himself: "Did." He wants to be angry. He ought to be. When Wolfram & Hart screwed around with his head, he'd at least signed a contract first. But try as he might, Gunn can't get himself past grief. Angel was so bad at being part of a family, and this is one last unfixable example. Gunn can't see red because he can only see reason. He's not sure if that's an upgrade, or if that's just who he is. He rubs his eyes, relieved that they're not completely dry.

"Yeah," Connor says. There's a long, breathy pause, like he wants to hang up but he's a little afraid to.

"So what did I miss?" Gunn says.

"I don't know," Connor says. "I mean, my memories -- my other memories -- got restored, but I -- I probably don't know most of the stuff that would matter to you. I only know my side of the story, you know? And I never got to -- I guess nobody will ever get to know the rest, now."

"It ain't like it changes anything anymore," Gunn says. "You might as well give me what you have." 

Connor's right: he doesn't know most of the things that would interest Gunn. He remembers killing vampires on the streets of LA; he remembers a lot about Cordelia. He knows very little about how he came to exist, although he is certain that he's Angel's son. There's something in his clipped sententiousness and instinctive moral rectitude that makes Gunn certain of it, too, despite the apparent impossibility of it. Stranger things have happened. The whole world is full of magical exceptions to its magical rules.

Gunn gives Connor his number and says to keep in touch, but the gesture is empty. He knows he'll never hear from the kid again. With Angel gone and Wolfram & Hart bending over backwards to cut their ties and cut their losses, Gunn's barely in that world anymore. For the first time in his life, he's above ground. He could stay there, he thinks. There are other ways to fight the good fight, ways that don't involve stakes or crossbows or near-death experiences. Ways that don't involve waking up to the news that all your friends are gone but you're supposed to keep on fighting anyway, as if there were enough glory in the universe to avenge their names. 

He spends another few days convalescing, but the next Tuesday, the sun is high in the sky, glowing fearlessly through the smog. He takes it as a sign. He calls the Public Defender's office and arranges a job interview. The Public Defender's office, it turns out, is always hiring, and that goes double for black guys with a BA from Stanford and a JD from UCLA. They tell him he's overqualified. "I did my time at a big firm," Gunn explains, convincingly. Since the upgrade, everything he says is convincing. "I wanted to be a lawyer so I could help people. Over there, I wasn't helping anybody."

The interviewer sighs; she's heard it all before. "We get a lot of people who say that. Usually they're back at their old firm or opening their own practice within a year or two." But she smiles. "We're grateful for that year or two, though."

"So I'm in?" he says.

"So you start on Monday," she says.

Gunn wins the most cases of any lawyer in the Los Angeles Public Defender's Office. In most of his clients, he sees people he used to be, people he could have been. He brokers deals for the guilty ones, and he wins justice for the innocent -- not always, but often enough to feel like he's still fighting the fight. He visits Aunt Luce once a week and volunteers for Anne on the weekends. Every month, Wolfram & Hart direct-deposits ten thousand dollars into his bank account, but he doesn't hear from them otherwise. He assumes he'll be spending enough time in Hell, earning that money; he resents that, but a contract is a contract. He plans to postpone its fulfillment as long as possible.

In his idle moments, he remembers that some of the minor players from his old life might still be around: Gwen Raiden, the Grooselugg, maybe even Lorne, who skipped out on the final battle. But the farther away he gets from them, the more they seem like all his other memories. They are something he read in a book, something he dreamed, delusions from the days when he believed that vampires lurked in alleys and demons could block out the sun. He knows that part of the world is real; it's not something you forget completely, once your eyes are open. But his best gifts are brightest in the daylight, and that's where he has to fight now, with his fists in his pockets and his voice booming perfect diction, perfect arguments, perfect reconstructions of memory.


End file.
